


introduce yourself

by thespiritofregret



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Identity Issues, Other, no nureyev alias generator yes wikipedia list of nobility, nureyev argues with himself for 1600 words, obvious misuse of the concept of a name
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:42:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26063641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thespiritofregret/pseuds/thespiritofregret
Summary: A thief without a name attempts to write a job application.
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	introduce yourself

It was late in the afternoon and there was a blank sheet of paper on the hotel table that was supposed to be a letter. The thief had been sitting there looking at it for half an hour. He still had not decided what name he wanted to write it under.

This shouldn’t have been difficult. He’d been doing it for so long now that it should have been second nature to him. It _was_ second nature to him. He’d already constructed six different personas, all with their own names and backstories and habits, but every time one of them had tried to put pen to paper it had felt as though he was sliding around on the surface of their mind, unable to slip inside. If they’d had thoughts of their own, he hadn’t been able to think them. An identity he couldn’t embody was no use to him.

Perhaps it would be worth bringing back one of his previous selves. He knew them well enough to portray them, even if the subtleties continued to elude him. Their thoughts still clustered at the back of his head.

_Forget the whole affair,_ said Malachi Prince, brusque and unattached. _If it takes this much effort just to get started, it’s not worth our time_. It certainly wasn’t worth Prince’s time, but Prince would suit the job as little as the job would suit him. An irritable trader with a small inherited fortune and little to no acting skills could never pass himself off as a master thief, nor would he want to. Most of the others had similar problems. Perhaps if the thief narrowed the pool to just the identities he used around his clients he’d have more luck.

_This is the chance of a lifetime!_ exclaimed Anas Sultan. _Working with Buddy Aurinko? **The** Buddy Aurinko? We simply can’t miss this opportunity!_ Sultan would love this job. It was a pity he was too small a fish to ever make it onto the crew. Not enough talent, too much noise. In any case, the thief couldn’t afford to be someone who idolised Buddy Aurinko. He had debts to pay.

_What does it matter what we call ourselves?_ asked Perseus Shah from somewhere _very_ far down the queue. _They’re professionals. They’ll all know that isn’t our real name._ He was right, insofar as that the crew the thief was applying to wouldn’t hire any of the various selves he had floating around for the people they were. He was applying as the Thief Without A Name, not as Sultan or Prince or any of the others. He planned to admit outright that the name wasn’t his. But he still needed to be _someone_ while he was on the crew, and he only had these aliases to be.

_Be nobody at all_ , suggested Rex Glass. _It’s easy not to exist, even while there are other people in the room. Be an initial and an embodiment of something bigger than yourself, and nobody will see you at all._ That only worked when that something bigger existed behind you, though, and Glass could hardly pass his Dark Matters credentials onto the thief’s new identity even if that would have done any good. Glass wasn’t worth listening to, anyway. Glass had been cobbled together at three in the morning after the thief had witnessed a very inconvenient murder and had had altogether too much character for the forgettable Dark Matters agent he should have been. He had singularly failed, and the thief did not intend to bring him back again.

_You don’t have to be Dark Matters to be nobody_ , offered somebody else who was nobody, just a Thief, but the thief shoved that one away immediately. That was the same nobody who’d worked for a lunatic and had the sense to give her no name at all. That nobody had said _there is nothing and no one that could shake me now_ and been absolutely, categorically wrong on both counts. The thief did not want to be him. And besides, nobody on the crew would be willing to call him the Thief when they were all just as much thieves themselves.

Back to the array of criminals for hire, then. There were still several more to consider, enough that he could put the mistakes of Rex Glass and Miasma’s unnamed Thief out of his mind. Caesar Aveyard, implacable determination and ruthless efficiency, gaze flat and cold as slate. Earl Blythe, quick smile, quicker fingers, quicker feet. Amari Sheikh, dripping with stolen jewels he was too proud of himself not to wear.

_And me_ , said Duke Rose with a laughing lilt in his voice, sounding for all the world as though he belonged right here. As though he had the _right_ to throw his name into the ring.

_But I do_ , said Rose, words tinged with exaggerated offence. _I have **every** right. Aren’t I a talented thief? Didn’t I steal the Ruby 7 from Engstrom? Didn’t I rob the Utgard Express?_ The thief had to concede the point, but it hardly mattered. What Rose had done was irrelevant, because he hadn’t done it alone. Duke Rose was married, and the thief was looking to _avoid_ Glass’ fundamental mistake, not run right into it.

_I made no mistakes_ , Rose objected. _I needed my partner to complete the job. He saved my life on multiple occasions. I would call that a **success**._ The thief curled his hands into fists, digging his fingers into his palms. He did not _want_ to listen to Rose talk. Rose belonged firmly in the part of the thief’s mind that contained thoughts not to be thought about for a long time yet.

_Your only job ended with **weeks of imprisonment and torture** ,_ he snapped at Rose.

_But I **did** complete the job_, Rose retorted. _The uncrackable vault. The impossible heist. And I did it with Dahlia, and I was right to do it with Dahlia, because he and I are and always will be stronger together._

_Then **why did he leave me?**_ Peter Nureyev snarled back.

Oh.

Nureyev curled up in his chair and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, gritting his teeth against his growing headache. He was not as young as he used to be. His head was too full. He could not afford to be Peter Nureyev, not on this job, not now. He could not indulge the misjudged morals of the teenage revolutionary or the choking heartsickness of the man in love. He had debts to pay.

_You’ll need references_ , noted Rex Glass. _You can’t apply to something like this without someone to vouch for you. We all know who the only person who can is._ He was right. Only Glass and Rose were supposed to have met the lady known as Juno Steel, but somehow he bled through into all of the others. If any of them ever met him again, Nureyev knew they would know him, however far from Hyperion City their stories had been set.

Nureyev took a deep breath. _Juno on the references then_ , he thought, and very carefully did not think about the way his mind hitched on the name. Of all his selves, only Glass and Rose had ever met Juno Steel. He could not be Glass on a ship full of criminals. Rose was married and very obviously head over heels in love, and Nureyev emphatically would not be in love with anyone, let alone Dahlia Rose. Juno had never been that good an actor. Not that it mattered what Juno was or wasn’t, because whoever Nureyev decided to be next, he _was not_ going to be in love with Juno Steel. The Thief Without A Name worked alone, and as far as his next self needed to remember, he always had.

_Ransom_.

There was a voice there, all of a sudden, someone Nureyev had never really been, because the one other time he had called himself Ransom he had not yet stopped being Peter Nureyev. It was a name that had come from Mag, a name that belonged to the Guardian Angel System and betrayals and the birth of a nameless thief. Ransom was bitter and practical and did not trust, no matter what, because the place of his beginning was in the heist that might have taken New Kinshasa out of the sky and the tower of lies that had come tumbling down as it began to fall. Ransom did not need to worry about moral scruples or getting too attached. Ransom was tied down to nobody, and he intended to keep it that way.

Nureyev wrote _Ransom_ on the piece of paper experimentally and found he liked it. Ransom was strangely easy to slip into being, even though he barely knew who Ransom was. A thief, of course, and an excellent one. Extremely talented and extremely guarded. A thief who, for some inexplicable reason, knew a Martian private eye well enough to list him as his best character reference, and this was where Ransom closed the door. He did not need to know how he knew Juno Steel. It did not matter. Ransom might know him, but he had no strong feelings for him, because Peter Ransom was not attached to anyone.

He tripped over the first name for a moment, but it had fallen into place there as easily as breathing and it was never a good idea to displace an organic character detail. Peter Ransom it was. He wrote the whole name down and looked at it for a minute or so, letting the rest of his personality settle, and then Peter Ransom picked up a new sheet of paper and began to compose a letter.

**Author's Note:**

> Would anyone be writing weird crime application letters on actual paper in the space sci-fi future? No. Do I care particularly? Also no.
> 
> I never reply to comments because I am Anxious but I love them and everyone who leaves them with all my heart


End file.
